John A. Macdonald
Our sense of John A. Macdonald as the father of the country is so strong that it is hard to think of him as a young politician. He was first elected before he was thirty and led a government before he was forty, but it is the second half of his career, the prime ministerial years from 1867 to 1891, that fixed his image for posterity.
A child immigrant from Scotland, he grew up around Kingston, and became that city’s representative in the colonial legislature in 1844. Well before confederation, he had mastered the legislative process and honed his leadership techniques. He was a late convert to the confederation movement and a sceptic about federalism, but once he joined in, his organizing skills and procedural mastery made him a key participant and then the first prime minister of the new nation.
